<note
class="inTransmittal">
Thank you for letting us take a little extra time
to comment on this draft.
The following comments have been supported by a rough
consensus in the Protocols and Formats WG.
We would be glad to discuss anything here that is
unclear or not convincing with you at your convenience.
Al
/chair, PFWG
</note>
1. Potential of the technology
RDFa in XHTML (http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-rdfa-syntax-20080221/)
has potential for accessibility and Web users with disabilities by
allowing authors to mark core information on their web pages in a
machine-readable manner. Assistive technology can use this
information in their interacting with the user, and thus make access
to information faster or possible where it would be cumbersome or
impossible for the user otherwise.
A couple of sample use cases:
A screen reader telling the user the telephone number of an online
shop web page when the user has problems finishing the transaction.
A schematic diagram illustration of the core content of a web page,
for example such as offered by SWAPviews from UB Access (http://
www.ubaccess.com/swapviews.html). This can be helpful for some
people with cognitive disabilities.
2. Potential problems of the technology wrt accessibility
2.1 Processing described for static information only (section 5)
RDFa in XHTML seems to be scoped for static information only, and the
processing model is described for a static DOM that does not account
for dynamic changes after the document has been loaded. (Cf. first
sentence in 5.5: â€œProcessing would normally begin after the document
to be parsed has been completely loadedâ€